


Locus Amoenus

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall, Violation of various heavenly laws, emotional reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-03 01:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12738126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: Will and Hannibal in the Garden of Eden





	1. Chapter 1

The water takes them in and the last thing Will remembers thinking is how right it is: that it should end like this, in an ocean of pain, with Hannibal clasped in his arms.

Then oblivion: well-earned and well-deserved.

\---

When Will was small he'd asked his father what happened to people when they died.

"Imagine you're a glass of water," Will's father had said. "You die, the water gets spilled back into a great big ocean. That's it."

\---

No light, no sound. A needless, free void. And then...

Water. Water still, but no longer made of icy agony. He's drifting. A summer-warm current, too tender to belong to any ocean, carries him on.

Then there is sound, like a song heard through a fog. The song is the trill and whisper of a stream.

So that's what a brain's last stand looks like. A hundred billion synapses throwing everything they've got at the trauma of finality. But then why is he so very aware of his eyelids? They lie on his face like iron grates and if he could just, he might just...

They slam open as if for the first time. Will hears a long, rasping gasp - his own. He sees. He's looking up at an endless dome of perfect blue.

His mouth follows his eyelids. It moves but doesn't speak.

"What..."

Try as he might, he cannot feel pain or fear.

He flails in the dream-like water. Limbs, neck, thoughts. He demands an end to the hallucination and a rapid descent into nothingness or a brutal awakening in an ICU.

His thrashing arms hit the soft shallow bed of the stream and the pleasant water splashes vividly around him. Will stops drifting and comes ashore. His ass sinks into a sandy riverbank and water weeds caress his toes and ankles.

"What... what..."

The music grows around him: an infinite variety of songbird, the shimmering sound of a breeze winding through the crowns of trees. He doesn't dare look up. It's too much as it is to deal with the reality of his own body, whole, naked and unharmed.

Nothing adds up. There's no blood, not even the smell of it. His hands roam his skin in search of wounds and scars. He finds none.

It's obvious. He must be someone else. He staggers, still disbelieving of every movement, to his knees. They sink into the warm sandy bank. He peers into the water and finds the reflection of Will Graham. Dark hair, blue eyes, no scars.

"Okay, okay." He can hear the movement of his mouth now and it sounds like him, too. It's time, he decides, to look up.

She stands on the opposite bank, against a landscape of gentle green hills patched with woodland and veined with clear brooks. The whole of the sky is her halo.

In her arms, she cradles a lamb, dark as the hair that streams down her body. It's so much longer than it ever was when she was alive.

When she wades into the stream to reach him, her smile is the most beautiful thing Will has ever seen.

"Hello, Will."

Will weeps.


	2. Chapter 2

They settle at the river's edge, among the scent of wild herbs and flowers. Iridescent insects swoop lazily around them, diving into blooms then drifting off again, their buzz dispersing into birdsong and the sound of the water. The lamb grazes nearby.

They sit cross-legged from each other, hands clasped. Will's tears won't stop coming. He's sniffling like a child.

"I'm going to wake up, aren't I?"

She shakes her head, still smiling. "This isn't a dream, Will. I can't tell you that it's real, because I don't think that matters now."

"How— how long have you been here, Abigail?"

She looks past him, scanning the horizon. The light bathes her face, but doesn't make her squint. Will has yet to find a sun in the vast blue dome above them. The light is everywhere.

"It feels like a long time. And it feels like a day. I guess you'll know soon enough what I mean. Remember how you used to always be able to tell when time was dragging or flying by?"

Will nods.

"That doesn't happen here. It's like... it's just not important."

He untangles his fingers from hers and reaches up to frame her face, hands hovering an inch from her skin. The tears clear and he sees her vividly now: so young and happy and calm.

"Could I...?"

She nods. Will's hands shake when he touches her hair. He tucks the dark strands behind both ears, away from her neckline.

"Ta-da," she says and laughs. The lamb looks up from his nibbling and bahs in reply.

"Abigail." Will chokes on the words. "Please. Can you forgive me?"

"Hey. Hey." It's her hands on his face now, warm and steadying. "There's nothing to forgive. It's over. Back then, back... there, I was always afraid. I can't remember what that feels like now. Something was always behind me or ahead of me. Like a chain. It's gone now."

The chain of causality, Will thinks. Fear followed violence followed revenge followed more violence. Broken now. Gone. But if the two of them are here...

"How can we be here?"

"You mean because we were bad people?"

"You weren't— aren't bad." The choice of tenses suddenly overwhelms him.

"I was." She looks down. The lamb has settled down beside her and she strokes its small curly-fleeced head. "I wondered about that too. Then I understood. I'm still me. But the things I did and the things that happened to me don't matter anymore. It doesn't feel like they're in the past. They're just apart."

"But we don't deserve—"

"There's no deserving anymore," she says simply. She reaches over to a patch of pink clovers growing nearby and plucks two. "Did you know that if you suck these you can taste the nectar? I don't get hungry or thirsty anymore, but this is kind of fun. Wanna try?"

Will laughs and takes the offered flower. He follows in her example and opens and squeezes the petals for a drop of sweetness. It dissolves on his tongue like liquid light.  
  
"There's so many fruit trees and berry bushes everywhere. But the little wild strawberries are my favourite. I'll show you where the good ones grow. And I'll try and show you around, but this place just goes on forever. And you never get lost." She beams at him, grabs for his hands again. "You know, I wasn't lonely before you came but I'm so happy now that you're here. That you're both here."

Will's heart stutters for a moment, then starts up with a hundred flames. 


	3. Chapter 3

 

She takes him by the hand and leads him to the edge of a soft dark wood.

Will wants to touch every blade of the tall swaying grass that tickles his bare calves. He wants to scrutinise the reality of every single hair on Abigail's head. He watches black wisps of it dance about her shoulders in the light and the wind. The urge to weep hasn't quite subsided.

She stops at the foot of a sandy path and turns to him, face breaking into a grin. "Before I forget: he doesn't know yet. He's still asleep. This is a pretty major deal, so I thought you might wanna tell him."

"Where do I go?"

"Don't you know already?"

Will does. He can't explain it. His heart has left his chest and gone bounding along the path into the wood. He can almost see its trail, a red ribbon winding through the trees. "I guess I do."

She kneels down and gives her lamb a quick hug.

"I'll send Rupert with you just in case. Come and find me when you're ready?"

"Rupert?" Will can't help a snort. "I thought my dogs' names were goofy."

She gives Rupert a smooch on the head. "One of the girls I knew had a cat named Rupert. He was really sweet, never scratched or hissed at anyone. I think she must have a place like this all to herself now, don't you think? Maybe she even has Rupert with her."

How can Will say what he thinks? Whatever laws he thought had applied to men like him, to girls like Abigail's butchered peers, have evaporated in the omnipresent light of this new reality. He shakes his head and feels lost. "I don't know. I don't know anything, Abigail. I don't understand how you can be happy that he's here. After everything he's done."

She cocks her head and looks at him with that same calm expression of someone to whom everything is clear. "Aren't you happy?"

Will wants to scream yes then scream yes again. He stares at her and says nothing.

"Remember when you first met him? I think we both had this hope about him, right? About who he could be to us?"

How could Will forget? Tumbling into that warm well of intimacy and trust and never wanting to leave. He remembers the years he spent peering through the thorny tangle of memories at the mirage of that hope. Even then he knew he was looking back at love.

"I don't know what this place is," she says. "But I'm kind of guessing that it's made out of our best hopes."

"Abigail."

She steals a quick hug. "Go find him. I'll be waiting."

Then she steps back, gives him little wave. She pauses to pluck a flower, tucks it into her hair, then bounds off, light as her little black lamb, swift as Will's escaping heart.

And then Will is alone again, except for the soft wooly head butting against his knee, urging him to go.


	4. Chapter 4

The path through the wood dissolves into an elevated clearing crowned with a towering tree.

A labyrinth of roots and ivy flares out from its trunk and streams down to Will's feet, cutting through a kaleidoscopic carpet of moss and flowers, white anemones and yellow aconites. A sprawling canopy hangs thick and heavy with leaves red as blood. They shift on the branches, moved as if by a soft beckoning breath, or drift down lazily between a thousand slivered beams of the omnipresent light.

Will finds he can name every single plant he's come across so far. He cannot name the tree.

Still, he knows he's arrived. His heart throbs somewhere outside his chest, very closeby, just ahead. He takes a step forward.

"It's here, isn't it?"

Abigail's pet peers up at Will with a mild, quizzical eye.

"I guess expecting you to talk was too much to ask." He takes a deep, shaking breath. "Okay. At least show me where to go."

The little black hooves step gingerly into the tangled roots and trot up, toward the broad, ridged trunk. Will follows into the blood red shadow of the tree, feet sinking unsure steps into the soft moss.

To the left of the trunk a veil of low growing boughs and ivy spills down to the earth and the flowers. The lamb looks back at Will, then steps through the foliage, out of sight.

\---

Will slumps to his knees, hands to his mouth. His chest heaves. It must be with giddiness.

The tree's roots twist out into a cradle lined with crimson leaves. In it, the shape of a body Will would know from a passing glance. Curled on his side, Hannibal. Impossibly young.

Will inches closer on his knees. He reaches out with a shaking hand, then hesitates. Hannibal's chest rises and falls to the rhythm, Will thinks, of the red leaves that sway above. His eyes flicker fast behind his eyelids.

"I don't know where to start," Will says, as softly as he can. "Are you still falling? Are you drowning? Is that how this works?"

He skims his palms an inch from Hannibal's skin, feeling the living warmth, barely brushing the soft straight wisps of hair from which all gray has faded.

"I never used to touch you. I wanted to, you know. I remember every time you touched me." Will sinks down beside him, into the cradle of leaves. His hand falls onto Hannibal's cheek. “Here..."

A gasp, that same last stand of fear that Will remembers feeling in the water. Hannibal's eyes fly open.

"Will?"

Will catches his hand. "Shh, it's okay. It's me."

Hannibal looks about wildly. His lips are parted, still catching air in small gasps. His eyes settle on Will again and stare.

"I had hoped I would dream of you in the last instant."

"Not an instant. Not a dream."

"This place..."

Will clasps his hand tighter. "I'll try and explain. I—"

"All these years and I never stopped dreaming about you. But never like this. You were never this real."

Will laughs and wipes at his eyes with his free hand. "Like I said. Not a dream."

"The dreams of the dying are said to be vivid."

"I never stopped dreaming about you either. The whole three years. But this isn't—"

"Three years..."

Will nods. 

"Where do you think you left me, Will?"

"Left— I never left you. Never. We went down together. There was nothing else I wanted more."

Hannibal shakes his head. The tears spill down in two even streams. Will begins to understand. He pulls at Hannibal's shoulder, draws them together, bodies and mouths. Kiss after hard kiss, and in between:

"How long?"

Hannibal clutches him close.

"They found me. They never found you. I waited thirty five years." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it, my least read Hannibal fic and my own personal favourite. I cried writing the last chapter. After several exhausting months of dealing with death anxiety, it brought some comfort. 
> 
> I know it's unlikely verging on impossible, but I hope my partner and I get our own locus amoenus.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the meaning of Locus Amoenus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_amoenus


End file.
